


Turbulence

by magicianlogician12



Series: You, Me, and the Sea [14]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicianlogician12/pseuds/magicianlogician12
Summary: Nightmares rob Miri of sleep. Jaina goes to lend her strength.
Relationships: Jaina Proudmoore/Original Female Character(s)
Series: You, Me, and the Sea [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832245
Kudos: 1





	Turbulence

Jaina wakes alone, and it feels _wrong._

It feels wrong, because Miri came back from her last mission, a scouting assignment on the shores of Nazmir, two days ago. It feels wrong, because when Miri is not on a mission, aboard her ship, she is here, in Proudmoore Keep, sprawling carelessly over Jaina’s bed with her limbs thrown haphazardly across Jaina’s sleeping body for her to extricate herself from come morning.

It feels wrong, but a thread of tension in the air, faint and invisible as spider-silk, is what pulls Jaina from bed to investigate its source.

She follows it out of her chamber, to the libraries she haunted in her childhood so much that her mother had teased her about moving a bed within, so she could live there. She follows it, and finds Miri, on a couch, with what had to be a hidden bottle of something strong and potent-smelling. Even through the dark glass, Jaina can see it’s full, all but untouched, and the absentness in Miri’s starlight-colored eyes tells her that her attention is wandering somewhere a thousand leagues away.

She starts, and looks up to meet Jaina’s eyes. Even her voice is rougher than normal, made hoarse by exhaustion, when she says, “What are you doing up, Proudmoore?”

“I could ask you the same.” Jaina takes another step within, cautiously reaching out with one hand to see if Miri will take it, or brush it off, a habit she has been trying, so very, very hard, to break. “It’s late.”

Miri huffs with laughter, empty of amusement. “You’re telling me.” Setting her untouched bottle down, she rubs her face with both hands, and when she takes them away, Jaina knows she isn’t imagining the shadows under her eyes, deeper than normal. “It’s nothing. It’ll pass.”

“Is it nothing? Or will it pass?” Jaina raises a brow, takes another step closer. “It must be one or the other, but not both.”

Miri’s smile is tired, but it grows wider. “You’re picking up some of my wit, Proudmoore. You should use it more often.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Miri sighs, and looks off at some corner of the library, looking at something Jaina can’t see, her single remaining eye turning vacant and distant again. “Just…old ghosts. Some nights they haunt me more than others, is all.”

Jaina swallows down the tightness in her throat. “I know the feeling.”

“But,” Miri straightens, her gaze refocusing, “it isn’t something you ought to worry about. Nothing to be done about it now, anyway.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jaina says, the words drifting slow and soft through the empty nighttime air with its single thread of tension.

“Do what?”

“Pretend it isn’t something that troubles you.” Closing the last step of distance between them, Jaina leans down and picks up both of Miri’s hands, hanging loose in her grasp before her long, thin fingers tighten ever so slightly around Jaina’s own. “You are strong for me, in my moments of weakness–let me do the same for you.”

“You’re _everyone’s_ rock, Proudmoore.” Miri’s voice turns hoarse again, perhaps part from exhaustion, but something else, too, lurking at the back of her gaze. “You deserve a safe place to land.”

Releasing one of Miri’s hands, Jaina lifts her own to cup Miri’s cheek. “So do you.”

Miri, as everyone around her knows, has captained her own vessel for over a thousand years, leading different rotations of crewmates throughout that time as they named themselves scourges upon the seas. She calls them more _family_ than _crew_ , and Jaina knows Miri would not have given up those years or those people for anything. She is their leader, but she is also their sister, mother, mentor, guide. And they trust her to lead.

But, as Jaina has come to learn over many long years, that trust carries a burden, and not one easily shed.

As Jaina’s thumb brushes the high, sharp angle of Miri’s cheekbone, though, the steel leaves her bones, and the air leaves her in a great rush, her face falling heavy into Jaina’s palm as she carefully sits at the empty space to Miri’s left, her blind side, and pulls Miri’s shoulders down to her.

It’s a long time before the steady rhythm of Miri’s breathing tells Jaina sleep has claimed her at last, and once it does, it takes little time for it to claim Jaina as well.


End file.
